Yay!! I thought I was the only person on planet earth who believes that DVD hijacking should be illegal. Each time I run into a DVD that forces me to sit through the commercials I fire an email to the studio to register my complaint. If more people would do the same maybe things would improve. It seems that most DVDs allow one to press the menu button which will skip all the trailer stuff. I still occasionally run into those where nothing seems to work.

I feel the same way when I go to the theater and they show 20 minutes of trailers before getting to the feature film. It is one of the reasons why I assembled my home theater. I didn't like the idea of paying for commercials.

I recall in 1978 after returning home from military service, going to the movie with my wife and instead of showing a cartoon prior to the feature film, they ran a series of adds for local merchants. To the embarrassment of my wife, I stood up and looked toward the projectionist and shouted, "What is this s**t?!!! I'm not going to sit here and watch crap like this. I paid money to watch a movie!". I expected that everyone in the theater would share my sentiment and join in my protest. But no. They sat there like cows and allowed it to go on and on. Now, because of the apathy demonstrated back when the practice first began, we're stuck with it.

I do not watch TNT network because they continue to run banner ads during the movies themselves! I can't believe that more people don't complain when networks display their logo continuously in a corner of the screen and then interrupt the broadcast by intruding with some sort of banner or silly animation.

Movie trailers on DVDs, logos and banner ads on cable and satellite feeds, commercials at the theater. They all exist because we allow it. I guess the only thing left is for us to install pop up blockers on our television sets. Or... email/snail mail the b*st**ds. If you just sit there and do nothing, as 99% of you will, it will only get worse.

That day in 1978 my wife said, "That's just the way it is and you can't do anything about it." I said, "Wanna bet?" I went and got a refund and left the theater. If more people would have spoken up or did what I did, no one would be forced to endure the endless trailers that always precede the feature film. Now its spread to DVD and cable channels and you know what? She was absolutely right. By myself I could do nothing.

I detest the previews on DVDs because they are usually out of date (depending upon when you watch the movie), but I really enjoy them at the movies (current). Sometimes they are the best part of the movie! One of my favourite shows is the "Nothing But Trailers" show on HDNET. I do think that commercials for local stores are a pain at the movies, but watching movie trailers is one of my favourite things about going to the movies.

On most models of DVD players you can press play twice on the remote before you close the DVD drawer and the movie will start playing immediately. If you choose not to change the audio format the movie will default to Dolby Digital, for DTS playback you may have to return to the main menu and change the audio options.